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Let my Wi-Fi go: FCC rules Verizon can't charge for Wi-Fi tethering

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Re: Let my Wi-Fi go: FCC rules Verizon can't charge for Wi-Fi tethering

#61

Post by paul9290 »

juiceandjuice wrote: post #32

The most important reason why this is a no-brainer is because of the 700Mhz spectrum auction. The open device restriction (or lack of restrictions really) was a key provision that google pushed for. I'm sure some people are going to say the government is overstepping their authority, but in fact, they aren't. Verizon was overstepping their authority in this case. Everybody has google to thank for this.

I guess this is nice to see, but with Verizon's new data plans they are eager for you to use as much bandwidth as possible.

Thankfully and at the moment there are carriers that provide unlimited data like Sprint. We need more of them!

Re: Let my Wi-Fi go: FCC rules Verizon can't charge for Wi-Fi tethering

#62

Post by vacri »

robomartin wrote: post #43

One small step for man... The next would be to somehow abolish the per-device data fee structure. We have seven iOS devices. Only three are actively online. Even at that, when at home, office or near wifi cellular data does not get used much if a all. Still, we have to pay 3x the cellular data monthly fee, which is insanity. I do understand the technical and business issues here, but this cuts both ways: I know that…

Do you also complain that your cable TV isn't used to capacity because you're not watching all channels 24 hours a day? It seems so peculiar that people complain that they're not using their internet account to saturation when they don't make the same complaint about other things.

Re: Let my Wi-Fi go: FCC rules Verizon can't charge for Wi-Fi tethering

#63

Post by SnowLprd »

RexRollman wrote: post #20

Charging for tethering is stupid anyway, as people are just using the bandwidth they are paying for. The only thing I detest more is that AT&T forces me to pay for text messages that I didn't even want.

You can call AT&T and tell them to turn off text messages entirely. I did that a long time ago. I use iMessage 98% of the time, and the other 2% goes through my Google Voice SMS, so I no longer need the ability to receive in-bound SMS on the AT&T number. It's a move I've never regretted, and I'm thrilled to longer give a single cent to AT&T for absurdly exorbitant text messages.

Re: Let my Wi-Fi go: FCC rules Verizon can't charge for Wi-Fi tethering

#64

Post by Steko »

paul9290 wrote: post #61
juiceandjuice wrote: post #32

The most important reason why this is a no-brainer is because of the 700Mhz spectrum auction. The open device restriction (or lack of restrictions really) was a key provision that google pushed for. I'm sure some people are going to say the government is overstepping their authority, but in fact, they aren't. Verizon was overstepping their authority in this case. Everybody has google to thank for this.

I guess this is nice to see, but with Verizon's new data plans they are eager for you to use as much bandwidth as possible. Thankfully and at the moment there are carriers that provide unlimited data like Sprint. We need more of them!

Doesn't Sprint also throttle you over a certain GB limit?

I have a hard time deciding if I want unlimited or not. I certainly don't need unlimited. I know there are people who use 50-100+ GB a month but I don't come anywhere near that and don't want to subsidize those people. I'm perfectly fine with a per GB charge or a decent sized base plan and a reasonable per GB overage. OTOH those caps need to grow every year because in a few years 100 GB a month will probably be today's 200 MB plan. So in that case "unlimited" has some futureproofing to it.

Re: Let my Wi-Fi go: FCC rules Verizon can't charge for Wi-Fi tethering

#65

Post by gojomo »

_delirium wrote: post #58
gojomo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how that follows. There's a percentage of their customers -- let's hypothesize 10% -- who were willing to pay an extra $20 for tethering. Now that Verizon can't charge for tethering, it can still raise base rates in such a way that, as long as these customers aren't paying more than $20 more, these customers are unlikely to switch. Further, there are some of the 90% of customers who valued tethering, but…

I agree with that analysis, but my read is that not all the dislike is only from people who stand to benefit (though that's a big part of it), but from a sort of intellectual/aesthetic dislike of markets that don't seem to be pricing commodities in a transparent/consistent way, and instead try to charge different people different prices for the identical product. For example, your analysis could also apply to differe…

I agree, there's a retaliatory impulse against those who seem to be arbitrarily price-discriminating... like norm-enforcers taking nothing rather than an unfair split in the ultimatum game. It explains some of the emotion around this issue. But if that effect were strong enough in this market, would it require the FCC to ban the tethering charge? (The FTC didn't have to ban Amazon's pricing experiments.)

Most people don't get that deep into it -- and if they do, there are so very many Apple and subscription-service pricing oddities they can also get worked up about.

Also, the ones most likely to apply a 'packets are packets' reasoning are the richer/sophisticated/multidevice/heavy-users, who also on another dimension are most willing to pay for the time-savings and OS-integration of an official solution.

As someone currently paying for Verizon/iOS tethering support, I do perceive a differentiation against an app-store or commodity-bandwidth offering, or using my own Apple Developer License to compile iProxy/iphone-socks-proxy. I get one-click activation, in the OS settings panel, along a path that Apple/Verizon have designed and support.

Re: Let my Wi-Fi go: FCC rules Verizon can't charge for Wi-Fi tethering

#66

Post by sunnynagra »

Steko wrote: post #64
paul9290 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess this is nice to see, but with Verizon's new data plans they are eager for you to use as much bandwidth as possible. Thankfully and at the moment there are carriers that provide unlimited data like Sprint. We need more of them!

Doesn't Sprint also throttle you over a certain GB limit? I have a hard time deciding if I want unlimited or not. I certainly don't need unlimited. I know there are people who use 50-100+ GB a month but I don't come anywhere near that and don't want to subsidize those people. I'm perfectly fine with a per GB charge or a decent sized base plan and a reasonable per GB overage. OTOH those caps need to grow every year be…

From what I remember in their recent PR campaign, they won't ever throttle you.

Re: Let my Wi-Fi go: FCC rules Verizon can't charge for Wi-Fi tethering

#67

Post by natrius »

tkahn6 wrote: post #28

This is a no-brainer. As others have pointed out, this is a wholly artificial fee. You still have to pay for the data. They're just charging you for how you access the data. Basically it's extortion. Here's something that congress should do. Telecom companies are government-granted monopolies. Why not acknowledge that it's already not a free market situation and cap the profit margin that these companies are allowed…

Limiting profits limits incentives to innovate. We probably don't need innovation for healthcare middlemen. We do need innovation and profits for healthcare providers as well as telecommunications companies.

Re: Let my Wi-Fi go: FCC rules Verizon can't charge for Wi-Fi tethering

#68

Post by SwellJoe »

bengl3rt wrote: post #46
SwellJoe wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has a Kickstarter campaign ever raised $4 billion? Because I suspect that's what it would take to begin building a network from scratch. There are resellers that focus on data, however...Clear is one. They aren't great (they share the Sprint Network, which is very bad in some places, and fair to middling in most), and they reportedly throttle some high usage customers (I've not run into this, though the times when I'…

I've had pretty good experience with Clear everywhere except Manhattan, where the service is horrible.

It's pretty good/fast along highways, but not in cities. It's also got much broader 2G and 3G, in middle of nowhere places, than T-mobile, which is my cell provider. Since I can't work without some kind of connectivity, I'm willing to pay for both. T-Mobile is really fast in bigger cities, but it's easy to find places with not data at all. Clear in Austin is horrible, in particular, but T-Mobile is crazy fast.

Re: Let my Wi-Fi go: FCC rules Verizon can't charge for Wi-Fi tethering

#69

Post by _delirium »

gojomo wrote: post #65
_delirium wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with that analysis, but my read is that not all the dislike is only from people who stand to benefit (though that's a big part of it), but from a sort of intellectual/aesthetic dislike of markets that don't seem to be pricing commodities in a transparent/consistent way, and instead try to charge different people different prices for the identical product. For example, your analysis could also apply to differe…

I agree, there's a retaliatory impulse against those who seem to be arbitrarily price-discriminating... like norm-enforcers taking nothing rather than an unfair split in the ultimatum game. It explains some of the emotion around this issue. But if that effect were strong enough in this market, would it require the FCC to ban the tethering charge? (The FTC didn't have to ban Amazon's pricing experiments.) Most people…

It's a good question, and somewhat hard to disentangle. My view is that there's a strong opinion from techies that "the tubes" should be a commodity/utility service, and therefore there's resistance to various kinds of provider control/segmentation of uses. Basically, this view holds that pipes should be treated as utility or common-carrier type provisioning.

Having that kind of view does correlate with being a heavier user, but I think also has an independent basis in technical/political ideals of what the internet should be, i.e. the correlation is due to a common underlying cause. I think it's probably not strong enough to dissuade that activity through market forces, though, because the percentage of users who have that technical knowledge and those technical ideals is quite small.

I'm one example, I think: I'm wary of both tethering charges and of some content providers' attempts to market-segment iPad content, and I own neither a smartphone nor an iPad, so it's not really based on saving me money.

(Offtopic edit: Huh, are you the same 'gojomo' from Bitzi? If so, I'm the 'delirium' that contributed some code to the Bitzi Bitcollider something like 10 years ago, to extract video metadata. Thought that handle sounded familiar.)

Re: Let my Wi-Fi go: FCC rules Verizon can't charge for Wi-Fi tethering

#70

Post by mey »

thetabyte wrote: post #51

While this is wondeful, ZDNet misses something huge picked up on Ars. "The FCC concedes that Verizon may charge $20 per month for customers who retain grandfathered unlimited data plans." http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/07/tethering-apps-must-b... So I won't be benefitting from this. The most ridiculous, bullshit part of all of this is that unlimited plans aren't unlimited anyway . They have "Fair Access Policy"…

I always wondered if it'd be worth it to start a class lawsuit over "unlimited" data plans.
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